Project 2: Destroy the Icon

For this project, I chose Tupac Shakur as my icon. I really like his style of rap and he is still an influence to many rappers today. I struggled with Photoshop because I've never used it this extensively. A lot of my process involved figuring out different filters and blending modes. I spent a lot of time doing that and that helped me to decide what look I liked.

I looked through many different pictures of Tupac and I decided on this one to base my project around. I liked how clearly you could see his face and eyes.

This was the original edit that I made to base the other iterations off of. I really like the glitchy/digital look. It has a bit of a 90s feel because of the noise in the background.

These are two images that I scanned in. I chose to scan in poems because Tupac's music has a poetic nature to it and he wrote poetry in addition to music (which could also be interpreted as poetry). The top poem is from a poetry book that I love called Bone. The second poem is a poem that Tupac wrote called JADA and is about Jada Pinkett Smith. Both poems are about love because that is something that Tupac often rapped about. 

I chose to make this iteration pink to relate to the ideals we have about love. 

This is the image I used for pattern. I chose a notebook because that is what rappers usually write their lyrics in, especially in the 90s when Tupac wrote. 

I liked the darkness of the holes in the notebook so I decided to bring that out with repetition and the blending mode that I used. 

For this iteration, I put "Parental Advisory Explicit Content" over Tupac's face. A lot of his music came with this advisory so that's what gave me the idea. I like how his eyes are not covered by the Advisory and his eyes are framed by the "I" in Advisory. I also tiled the Parental Advisory to make it give the illusion of a prison or something hiding Tupac. I think this is relevant because often times, rap music is seen as violent or inappropriate and many people put all rap music in a box when, in actuality, there are many different types of rap music. Tupac's music usually had a positive or personal message.

For the last image, I used a different picture of Tupac and blended the two photos. I think the two photos have different intensities. The original photo seems aggressive because of his body language and facial expression. The second picture seems more soft and less aggressive for those same reasons. I like the juxtaposition between the photos.